The Lent Series: Repentance

First of a series of three sermons - warning, long post!  

Are you sitting comfortably?  That’s a shame, because Lent is many things, but comfortable it is not.  Lent is the season of disturbance, of separation, of examining and facing down temptation and sin.  Like Advent, Lent is a penitential season, but while Advent is a time of joyful anticipation, Lent is altogether more serious. When I told the prison management team that I was planning to start Lent with an Ash Wednesday service, one person said, ‘Ash Wednesday, that’s a bit of a downer, isn’t it?’ 

Yes, possibly.  But Lent is not necessarily sad, or painful.  It is, however, challenging.  This is where the Christian life gets serious.  The Christ child, the cute baby in the manger, has grown up and is looking down the long road to Jerusalem.  We leave Epiphany and the beauty of Candlemas behind and follow Jesus into the desert to find – what?  Some peace?  Some space?  Jesus goes into the wilderness and finds hunger, thirst and temptation.  Jesus is challenged in the desert, and for centuries the church has taken this forty-day period as a time to reflect on, and face up to, our own challenges.  Lent is given to us as a time to focus on repentance, on obedience and on sacrifice, and my three Lenten sermons will focus on these three themes.

Repentance is not a fashionable word.  Preachers nowadays tend not to command repentance from the pulpit, at least in our tradition.  Hopefully we have learned enough humility not to command people to do anything, but perhaps we can point the way.  Repentance is a basic, biblical requirement.  Jesus is clear that repentance is essential to salvation.  From the time of his baptism to the ascension, Jesus preaches repentance. 

I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.

St Peter carries on the message:

 ‘Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

St Paul doesn’t let up either:

Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

Repentance.  It is so unfashionable we forget what it means.  To repent is to turn from sin, to turn towards Christ.  It means more than saying ‘sorry’ or feeling sorry, however deep those feelings run.  Remorse, penitence, they are first steps, but true repentance life-changing.

Repentance. Comes from the Greek metanoia – meta, to change, and noia, mind.  To repent is not just to feel sorry, but to change, to transform, the way you think and act.  Repentance is a transforming experience of grace, and Lent is our time to seek repentance.

The final proclamation of Jesus, before the ascension, is reported like this:

’Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations.’

Repentance and forgiveness of sins go hand in hand.  True repentance, entering that state of grace, means to accept forgiveness from God, to offer forgiveness to others and to turn away from sin.

We confess our sins, we receive forgiveness and we confirmed and strengthened in all goodness.  We are not to confess one day and commit the same sins again the next.  The process starts with forgiveness and ends with positive change.  Jesus is in the business of changing people to change the world.  God’s kingdom draws nearer when people change for the better.

It is, however, easy to get stuck at the first hurdle.  Accepting forgiveness is difficult.  It requires us, honestly and unflinchingly, to account for our sins and to admit them before God. Confession is good for the soul.  We do not need to confess to a priest, only to God, but there are times when confession to a priest may be helpful, as long as it is clear that God does the forgiving. 

But if accepting forgiveness is difficult, forgiving others is even harder.  We have to forgive, again and again.  Seventy times seven, Jesus says.  Let it go.  Forgive.  Because forgiveness is the only way to move forward.  Without forgiveness no conflict can end, no broken relationship can be healed, no angry family row can be forgotten.  Forgiveness heals both the giver and the receiver. 

I say this often to my other congregation in Cookham Wood, many of whom come from a culture based on pride and revenge.  I ask them about forgiveness and they say, well, some things you can’t forgive.  They say ‘you can’t just let things go’. Sometimes they listen, often they don’t.  I don’t know if I’ve helped them to let go, but it has certainly helped me.  I realised that I was suggesting that they forgive violence and abuse of the worst kind, to let their bitterness go and to accept that the only person you can change is yourself.  I was suggesting to the young people what is almost impossible – to let go of all the awfulness that has been done to them, to step out and refuse to perpetuate the endless cycles of domestic violence, gang conflicts, robbery and debt.  I make this enormous demand in the name of Christ, and assure them that they will be given the strength to do this great work of forgiveness.  I cannot then come home and fail to forgive the sins done to me. 

And if forgiveness seems impossible, in Christ we have the ultimate example – innocent, blameless and forgiving his enemies all the way to death.  It is only by his grace that we can find the strength to forgive.  It may take time before we are ready, it may take support, it may take counselling or therapy, but I firmly believe that forgiveness is the route to true healing of the soul.  There is time.  This doesn’t have to happen overnight, and it may happen in stages, but we are all called to do this task of forgiveness and reconciliation.

And that’s the hard work done.  Without the baggage of guilt from our own sin, and bitterness from others, we are free to change.  We can be the people God wants us to be.  We can turn to Christ, we can live in peace, we can be agents of change, we can take that healing grace into a broken world.

Of course, that is not the end of the story.  The potential to sin is always with us – a ‘human existential’ as the theologians have it.  We can, and will, continue to fall, but grace stays with us.  As we grow, year on year, we meet and fail new challenges, but the grace of God lifts us up again to carry on.  Repentance is not about dwelling on past sins, it is the opposite.  Free from old sin, we look to a free future. Repentance assures us of our own freedom.  We are free to sin or not to sin.  Whatever has happened to us in the past, whatever sins we have endured or committed, we have that precious freedom.  Our choice is to be bound by sin or to be free in Christ. 

To return to my starting point, Lent is not sad.  Repentance is the hopeful heart of our faith.  With and through the grace of God, we are healed, forgiven, restored and empowered. 

I wish you a holy Lent, a time of grace and peace.  I hope that together we can overcome our difficulties and challenges. 

On gay marriage

This is a reprint of a post originally published by www.speakerschair.com  I am reprinting it because of the many questions I am getting on this subject.

I am the Vicar of a semi-rural parish in a quiet and lovely part of England, though I write in a personal capacity. Our church is a pretty Victorian building, in much demand for marriage services. I love ‘doing weddings’ because the happiness in the church is palpable. The initial air of excitement and nervousness is followed by an outpouring of celebration and joy as the service progresses. Marriages start here, with the joining of two people into one fresh, new unit. A wedding is a sacred moment and I am privileged to see, close up, the faces of people as they pledge to honour, love and cherish each other, come what may, for the rest of their lives.

I cannot understand why this sacred moment of commitment before God and his people should be denied to gay couples. If two people love each other and are willing to commit to a faithful, devoted and lifelong partnership, I do not understand why we in the church should refuse them simply because they are gay. It breaks my heart to have to do this, and the lack of religious support to gay couples and to the priests that wish to minister to them is painful. I have been deeply hurt in recent weeks, firstly by the refusal to consecrate women as bishops and, secondly, by the Church of England’s response to the question of gay marriage. We are not just out of step with the modern world, we are out of step with the pastoral needs of our people.

The Church of England’s objection does not seem to be on the grounds that it disapproves of homosexuality per se – they say:

The proposition that same-sex relationships can embody crucial social virtues is not in dispute.

Rather, the issue seems to be with the definition of marriage itself. Their argument is that marriage is based on the idea of complementarity, of two people of different sexes coming together to make one married couple. To me this is a simplistic reduction of a complex truth. We are all different people who come together make the body of Christ. We are all complementary, and to suggest otherwise is to suggest that some people are unnecessary. We are all God’s children, unique and special. When two of God’s children come together into the institution of marriage, they create something fresh and new, an expression of God’s love worked out between two people.

I can think of no reason why this should not happen between two gay people, as long as they are able to make and mean the demanding and sacrificial vows that take place in a wedding ceremony. I have seen gay relationships which show levels of commitment and love which are awe-inspiring, and to say that they cannot be placed on a level with heterosexual relationships is ugly and discriminatory. Two gay people can be complementary and together create something new and beautiful.

Some people are called to a life of religious celibacy. Some live in hopeful singleness. Some are called to marriage. To deny gay Christians the calling of marriage is to deny them their personal vocation and is a cruel rejection that sets a poor example to those who live in our diverse society. To reduce the complex and wonderful differences between people to the one characteristic of sex is to deny our individuality, and it ignores and excludes many people who cannot be so easily pigeonholed. That gender identity and sexuality are more than a simple duality is a scientific fact which has been recognised for many years.

The other argument, less strongly put, but still widely heard, is that marriage is about creating a stable union for the birth and rearing of children. Obviously, many of the heterosexual couples we marry in church will not go on to conceive and bear children together because of age, choice or infertility. Marriage is about more than childbearing. What is more relevant is the number of people we marry who bring into the new family children from previous relationships, or from their own relationship in an earlier stage. We pray that these children will be nurtured and loved as they grow up with the newly married couple. I cannot see that gay couples will be any different. Some gay couples will bring children in from previous relationships, some will have children within the relationship. The child may not be the biological product of the two people, but then that is often the case in families. We do not reject couples for marriage who will have children with the help of third party donors. Marriage for gay couples would offer the same benefits to their children as to the children of straight couples, and to society as a whole.

It distresses me when we hurl biblical texts at each other in these debates, because I frame this issue in terms of human rights and the love of God for us all. To treat some people as unequal is a violation of the supreme commandments that we love God and our neighbour. Christians believe that God created people as equal beings, all offered salvation by the sacrifice made once for us upon the cross, the one defining act which redeems us by God’s grace and shows us our infinite value as his beloved children. Discrimination denies the fundamental equality worked out by Jesus in his life, his death and his resurrection for all people.

Discrimination, whether based on ethnicity, sex or sexual orientation is sinful, a denial of the innate beauty and value of every individual human being and a rejection of the wonderful diversity of creation. I hope the Church of England will one day wake up to this reality.

Thoughts on Nehemiah

Posting sermons is fraught with danger, as they are the raw versions of what is actually said from the pulpit.  Also they are not academic essays, checked and rechecked for accuracy, and nothing is quoted properly.  Nevertheless, for those who miss the service, it's quite nice to be able to read what you missed. So here are thoughts on Nehemiah from this Sunday:

Nehemiah, with the people of Jerusalem, built a wall around the city to keep the people safe, and they rejoiced.  They had somewhere they could live in relative security, and they were able to meet together to worship without having to post guards.  They could meet and listen to the word of God.

And that’s what they did.  Nehemiah and Ezra called the people together and they read, and interpreted, and no doubt argued, because that’s how Jewish thought evolves, through long and impassioned arguments.  Our tradition is a philosophical tradition, full of thought and interpretation and reason. 

If you’re not sure who the characters in this episode are, Nehemiah is the governor of the city of Jerusalem.  Originally a servant of the King, he asks to go to Jerusalem to rebuild the city walls which have fallen into disrepair.  The original memoir has been turned into an account of the restoration not just of Jerusalem, but of the Jewish people themselves.  It is a story with a historical underpinning rather than a direct account, a story with a purpose.  The purpose is to show how the people regain their city, their identity and their self-respect.

There is so much joy in this passage.  The people were lost and scattered and vulnerable, and now they have their city back and their priest can read to them and teach them.  They are so happy they listen for four or five hours.  Ezra must have been a good preacher.

So what does this passage say to us today?  I think it says something about what it means to be the people of God.  The Jewish people were coming together in a hostile world, where tribalism vied with imperial domination.  They had been enslaved and returned to their land and they needed to feel safe.  Paradoxically, the building of the walls had restored their freedom.

So, too, we have walls around us today.  Our church was built so that we could worship without interruption.  We can come together as the people of God and listen to the Word and sing his praises.  Christian communities who do not have a church building frequently long for one, while those who do have a building seldom quite appreciate what a privilege it is.  It is not the building itself, so much as the space it affords us to listen to the word and to meet together.  We need our space, dedicated to prayer and to God. 

We need our identity too.  We are the church of God, and like the Jewish people, we need to hold that identity.  It means something to come into church each week.  I do not for a moment subscribe to the view that only Christians come to church and only those who come to church are Christians.  Nevertheless, coming to church is a public commitment.  It changes you, it brings you into a different community.  Our whole worshipping community has a relationship with God which is deeper than you can find as an individual.  Together we can see more.  Our different perspectives enrich us in a way solitary study can never do. 

We so take church for granted.  Here we are, with what – forty people in our church.  We worry about how to bring people in.  Listen to this experience:

Every week, several hundred local people make the journey to St George’s Church. Its vibrant services are full to overflowing. Its Sunday school is bursting at the seams.

Surrounded by blast walls and guarded by 35 soldiers, all worshippers are frisked on the way in, to detect and deter suicide bombers. A bus collects most members and brings them to the church, hoping to avoid kidnap. These are, however, preventative measures; the reality of violence remains. The congregation takes enormous risks, simply by coming here to worship.

One Sunday, a would-be suicide bomber managed to get into the church building. Mercifully, they were removed by security before they could detonate their explosives.

What does St George’s Baghdad have that we don’t?  Perhaps it’s just that they know they need their church.  It is part of their identity, part of their soul.  Here, you can miss church one week knowing it will still be there the next.  There, the church is threatened.  Every person matters. 

Except that we are threatened too.  We are threatened on all sides by a society which increasingly ignores the holy for the material and the moral for the financial.  It is time, now for the church to take a lead and stand up for our Christian values of love and sharing and compassion.  The church is needed more than ever, but just as in the time of Nehemiah, just as in Baghdad, we need to realise the threats before we appreciate our church. 

The church is needed, and we must respond to that need.

Nehemiah built the wall.  Ezra taught the people.  But it wasn’t as simple as that.  Nehemiah, though not a priest, also taught the people and led the people and made it possible for Ezra to teach.  It was a great example of lay and ordained co-operation, the two of them working together, along with a great supporting team, to create the space and develop the teaching within it.  It is an example we should follow.  They teach everyone, male and female, together in the new square.  Such is the hunger for God’s word that all other divisions are forgotten.  It is the precursor to our new testament reading, where St Paul talks about the importance of working together and the importance of every member of Christ’s body.  At the end of the Week of Prayer for Christian unity, we would do well to remember this.  Every member of God’s church has a part to play, whatever church or chapel they attend and whatever they do within the church.  Each one of you, each one of us, has a unique, special and valuable role to play within the life of the church.  We have many roles which need to be fulfilled, and not enough people to fill them.  Now is the time to step forward, if you would like to do more in the life of the church.  We need leaders, people who will sit on the PCC and make decisions.  We need representatives on Deanery Synod.  We need people to help with the gardening and the building.  We need singers and musicians and artists and people who can make things and, above all, we need compassionate people who can listen and help with our pastoral work. 

Ezra could only stand up in front of the people and teach because the whole city had worked together to make it happen.  In fifty-two days they built their wall and restored Jerusalem, not just because of the inspiring, organised management of Nehemiah and the deep spiritual leadership of Ezra, but because they all worked together. 

So church is important, a safe space for us all.  And we need to work together to make it happen.  Church is about a community which works and shares.  But there is a third aspect to this story which is vital for us to rediscover in the church today.  Ezra, Nehemiah and all the people were joyful.  They were rejoicing with the Lord.  At the end of the service, Ezra sent the people out to have a party.  In St George’s Baghdad, they celebrate every week they can, knowing how blessed they are to have a church and a mission.  We need to tap into that holy joy too.  It’s not called ‘celebrating Holy Communion’ for nothing.

In our other readings we also see this joy.  St Paul says that if we honour each other, we will rejoice with each other.  Not just get along, not just keep the peace, but rejoice.  And Jesus’ words are perhaps the most joyful of all. 

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

   because he has anointed me

     to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

   and recovery of sight to the blind,

     to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’

That’s what we need to take from today’s readings.  We are at the end of the Christmastide celebrations. We have seen the Christ child and honoured the future King.  As we walk through the church’s year, we need to take that joy with us, to keep our eyes fixed on that mission.  I was asked last week what my missional priorities for the church are.  I think this should be the answer for all of us.  We have been anointed, with water and with oil, to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.

Amen.

Where did January go?

This is not another moan about overwork.  I love my job, or 95% of it, and I love meeting people, and I am deeply blessed and privileged to do what I do.  My work, both as a chaplain and as a priest, is endlessly varied and rewarding.  I would not exchange it for any other.
Still, seven months in to my new post, I am a little shocked at my inability to keep on top of things.  I constantly find I am just about managing to tread water, rather than swimming confidently.  Walking on  the water is a miracle reserved for my Lord, I think.
This is embarrassing, given I used to teach time management.  I used to think it was all a question of setting goals and working towards them, of prioritising ruthlessly, of making space for the important and whipping through emails at breakneck speed.  I was right, of course, but I worked in a different way.  Work was work, home was home, and I set strong boundaries.  I might give the company fifty or more hours during the week, but with few exceptions Saturday and Sunday were for my family and my own refreshment.  I need to find different ways of working, ways that accept the unpredictability of the role.  I need to cope with having my daughter waving her homework under my nose while I speak to someone on the phone, instead of getting angry because there is not enough of me to simultaneously admire artwork and discuss church finances.
At the same time, it would do the church no harm to learn from some of the techniques I used to apply so ruthlessly.  A good project plan, a detailed budget and a critical path analysis are not desirable, they are essential if you are to produce a major piece of work.  Many parish ideas drift because they are not project managed, and this leads to more strain, more stress and damaged relationships.  The problem is finding the goals.  Giving the good news to the poor may be what we are about, but it is an endless project with an eternal goal, and we are human.  I find we try to make goals out of the ineffable, setting up committees and searching for what is not to be found.  Perhaps I need something altogether different, a new paradigm for work which does not so much balance life and work as make our life our work.

Answers on a postcard please, this one is to be continued when I have more time.